Please Note:Download and save the blank form first, then fill out, and resave. Then you can email the completed form to Tracy.Zarrillo@ct.govOR print and mail to: Attention: Tracy Zarrillo, CAES, 123 Huntington Street, P.O. Box 1106, New Haven, CT 06504

The health and diversity of pollinators has in
recent years become a concern on the local, state, national and international
levels. Pollinators are essential to
human nutrition and to the survival of natural ecosystems – it has been
estimated that 75% of human food crops need animal pollination to produce their
full yield potential (Klein et al. 2007) and that 87% of flowering plants in
natural systems are pollinated by animals (Ollerton et al. 2011).

Many kinds of animals are pollinators, including
hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, beetles, flies and wasps as well as bees, but
this website focuses mainly on bees because they are the most important
pollinators of crops in our state, and they are also the focus of recent concerns.

The health of honey bees is important to beekeepers
for production of honey and wax and to farmers and gardeners for their
pollination services. Honey bees have been under serious stress in Connecticut
since the arrival of parasitic mites in the state in the late 1980s, but other
factors, such as viruses and other pathogens, exposure to pesticides, and the
decrease in open flowering meadows for bee forage, may also be contributing to
the colony losses experienced by beekeepers.

Current records of bees collected in the state
include 348 other species of bees in addition to honey bees. These include 16
species of bumble bees and hundreds of species in other genera less familiar to
the general public. Many species of bumble
bees and other bees are important pollinators of crop plants, and most bees in
all families are pollinators of native plants (although there are some bee
species in several families that live as parasites in the nests of other bees).

Important losses in species diversity of bumble bees
have been documented here in Connecticut, across North America, and around the
world. In Connecticut, two bumble bee species are considered likely to have
been extirpated from the state and another is considered threatened, according
to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Because
other species of bees have not been as intensively monitored, their current
status is unknown.

The Connecticut
Agricultural Experiment Station has responsibility for the state honey bee
registration and inspection program (link to Beekeeper Information and
Registration here: http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2818&q=376964#Beekeeper)
and also has active research and public information programs on plants used as
sources of nectar and pollen by bees, pollination of crop plants such as
pumpkin and winter squash, routes and levels of exposure of bees to pesticides,
and the diversity of bees in Connecticut.